The Shape of Water Read Free

being forced a little, he remembered her whispering once in his ear; and so, aroused, he tried slipping his knee between her closed thighs as he gripped her wrists roughly and spread her arms until she looked as though crucified.
    They eyed each other a moment, panting, when suddenly she surrendered.
    “Yes,” she said. “Now.”
    At that exact moment the phone rang. Without even opening his eyes, Montalbano reached out with his arm to grab not the telephone so much as the fluttering shreds of the dream now inexorably vanishing.
    “Hello!” he shouted angrily at the intruder.
    “Inspector, we’ve got a client.” He recognized Sergeant Fazio’s voice; the other sergeant, Tortorella, was still in the hospital with the nasty bullet he’d taken in the belly from some would-be mafioso who was actually just a pathetic two-bit jerk-off. In their jargon a “client” meant a death they should look into.
    “Who is it?”
    “We don’t know yet.”
    “How was he killed?”
    “We don’t know. Actually, we don’t even know if he was killed.”
    “I don’t get it, Sergeant. You woke me up to tell me you don’t know a goddamn thing?”
    Montalbano breathed deeply to dispel his pointless anger, which Fazio tolerated with the patience of a saint.
    “Who found him?” he continued.
    “A couple of garbage collectors in the Pasture. They found him in a car.”
    “I’ll be right there. Meanwhile phone the Montelusa department, have them send someone from the lab, and inform Judge Lo Bianco.”
     
 
As he stood under the shower, he reached the conclusion that the dead man must have been a member of the Cuffaro gang. Eight months earlier, probably due to some territorial dispute, a ferocious war had broken out between the Vigàta Cuffaros and the Sinagra gang, who were from Fela. One victim per month, by turns, and in orderly fashion: one in Vigàta, one in Fela. The latest, a certain Mario Salino, had been shot in Fela by the Vigatese, so now it was apparently the turn of one of the Cuffaro thugs.
    Before going out—he lived alone in a small house right on the beach on the opposite side of town from the Pasture—he felt like calling Livia in Genoa. She answered immediately, drowsy with sleep.
    “Sorry, but I wanted to hear your voice.”
    “I was dreaming of you,” she said. “You were here with me.”
    Montalbano was about to say that he, too, had been dreaming of her, but an absurd prudishness held him back. Instead he asked:
    “And what were we doing?”
    “Something we haven’t done for too long,” she said.
     
 
At headquarters, aside from the sergeant, there were only three policemen. The rest had gone to the home of a clothing-shop owner who had shot his sister over a question of inheritance and then escaped. Montalbano opened the door to the interrogation room. The two garbage collectors were sitting on the bench, huddling one against the other, pale despite the heat.
    “Wait here till I get back,” Montalbano said to them, and the two, resigned, didn’t even reply. They both knew well that any time one fell in with the law, whatever the reason, it was going to be a long affair.
    “Have any of you called the papers?” the inspector asked his men. They shook their heads no.
    “Well, I don’t want them sticking their noses in this. Make a note of that.”
    Timidly, Galluzzo came forward, raising two fingers as if to ask if he could go to the bathroom.
    “Not even my brother-in-law?”
    Galluzzo’s brother-in-law was a newsman with TeleVigàta who covered local crime, and Montalbano imagined the family squabbles that might break out if Galluzzo weren’t to tell him anything. And Galluzzo was looking at him with pitiful, canine eyes.
    “All right. But he should come only after the body’s been removed. And no photographers.”
    They set out in a squad car, leaving Giallombardo behind on duty. Gallo was at the wheel. Together with Galluzzo, he was often the butt of facile jokes, such as “Hey,